Chapter 34 - A Deeper Plot (CitC)
"Ludwig?!" Tubba hissed in disbelief, struggling to keep his voice low. They were in a public place, after all. "Ludwig?!" He repeated again, making sure Gonzales understood the enormity of what he was suggesting. "You're thinking Ludwig ''wants us dead?" "Hear me out before you call me crazy, Tubba." Gonzales cautioned, "aside from Blizzerd and I, who have you told that you're planning to double cross the Koopa Kingdom?" Gonzales didn't wait for his answer before ploughing resolutely on, "right. Clubbette. Has it not crossed your mind she'll double cross the double crosser?" Tubba could've laughed. It had crossed his mind. But he could handle Clubbette on her own, he was the stronger Clubba, he could use ''electricity, for Cloansar's sake! "Yeah, but what's in it for Ludwig?" "The Clubba Kingdom." Well, right. There's that. ''"Well, I'll admit, that's a pretty good motive." Tubba conceded, glancing at the door to the room to ensure they were still alone. "But would Ludwig really want us out of the way? He taught me ''electricity. If he wanted me dead, wouldn't he have sent me to the ship without teaching me electricity? I would've been a lot less powerful." "There's just one tiny clause, Tubba." Gonzales pushed himself into a more comfortable sitting position. "You weren't going to fight, unless you were able to defend yourself. I have a theory that Ludwig didn't want you not going to that ship. I don't think there even was ''a weapon of mass destruction." "What, you think Ludwig planted the Power Stars in space to get us killed?" "No. I think that he knew the Mushroom Kingdom had Power Stars in space, and wanted to defuse their threat and get rid of us in one swoop. Who's to say the cloaking field over the cage wasn't ''put there by Ludwig?" Tubba waved a hand in Gonzales' direction in disbelief. "This sounds like complete guesswork, you don't have any pr-" "But," Gonzales overrode Tubba, making his voice louder than the hisses and whispers they were speaking in. "I do. If there's no weapon, there's no need for the visit to the Comet Observatory. And when you were in the Comet Observatory's engine room, I know for a fact I saw Clubbette go near said room. But, as you told me, it wasn't Clubbette who saved you, it was-" "-Ludwig." Tubba finished. "Right. So unless you don't trust my word, I'm positive something bad is going to happen to you in the battle for the Clubba Castle," said Gonzales. "Don't go, Tubba." His voice changed from persuading to pleading. "Don't go." "You know I trust your word, Gonzales," Tubba told the bedridden Clubba. "But we -- as in, the battlers -- have already been warned. We have to go. And I'm not about to leave the other battlers. I'll keep my distance from Ludwig and Clubbette, but I've been on the run from three Kingdoms and Rogueport. I'm done running." Blizzerd, who had been abnormally silent during the discussion, piped up: "I told him you'd say that, Tubba." Gonzales settled back against the pillow, sighing as he did so. "I know, Blizzerd. I thought he'd say this too. It didn't hurt to try." Sharpening his voice, he added, "you better have a really good plan in place, Tubba." "As a matter of fact, I do," Tubba responded, glad he had actually thought of a plan beforehand. "I plan to go with the Koopa Kingdom for the original part of the journey, and into the Clubba Kingdom. At some point in the journey, I'll inform the battlers -- hopefully, excluding Clubbette -- of the next part of this plan. We'll come into the Clubba Kingdom, which according to the Koopa's espionage reports and Ludwig's word, is occupied by Toads and Beans, with the Clubbas in the dungeon." "You can't be thinking of freeing the Clubbas and backing them to beat BOTH the Koopa Kingdom and the Mushroom-Bean Alliance?" Gonzales interrupted as Tubba opened his mouth to continue. "Well, uh... I kind of was." "Tubba, that's the most predictable plan I've heard. You're smarter than that. Not to mention, the Clubbas LOST to the Mushroom-Bean Alliance. They won't stand a chance." Gonzales turned to Blizzerd, shrugging his shoulders in the direction of Tubba. "Can you believe this guy?" "Well, do you have a better idea?" Tubba shot at Gonzales, who shrugged again. "I don't. But Blizzerd does." Tubba turned his attention to the white Barribad, who was now beginning to float in his bed. While the Medikoopas had told him to limit movement, Blizzerd hardly listened to anyone, even if it was for his own good. "Tubba, you know the Koopa Kingdom have airships, right?" "Yes. That's the main method of attack." Tubba responded, wondering where Blizzerd was going with the information. Blizzerd's eyes flashed with pride as he recounted his plan: "Why don't you get other battlers spread across the airships? They shouldn't need more than six or seven to conquer the Clubba Kingdom's land, and you could take four, if not five." Tubba realized where Blizzerd was going with the plan. "And once we have control of the airships, we can prevent the other airships from taking us down by taking hostages." "And then, when you free the Clubbas from the dungeon," Blizzerd continued, "they have coverage from the air. The airships will turn the tables, and you can reclaim the Castle and chase both the Mushroom-Beans and the Koopas out of the Kingdom. You can get rid of the hostages at some point, and clear your Kingdom of the enemies." Shaking his head, for he could see a massive flaw in the plan, Tubba argued: "That won't work, because the moment we chase them past Forever Forest, they can just come back and reclaim the land a few days later, because the Clubbas won't be able to hold them off when they come again." "Take that narrow, undefended strip between the Clubba and Koopa Kingdoms," Gonzales explained, taking over from Blizzerd. "That'll warn off the Mushroom-Bean Alliance and the Koopa Kingdom, as well as give the Clubba Kingdom a few weeks of buffers to prepare. If they will be better prepared than Mazette had them, they can fight off any Kingdom. The airships will help, because the Clubba Kingdom haven't advanced to the air for decades, even though the other Kingdoms had by the 1970s. If you don't mind me saying so, the big fallacy of your father's Kingship was the failure to advance to the air." Tubba didn't argue. It was true. Running over the plan in his head, he could not find a major error with the planning or the thought process. It was just a matter of executing it perfectly. The last plan Tubba had executed in a war had failed miserably, because Chubba had screwed it up. However, the two brothers managed to save the war and the Kingdom by winning a fight against the opposing leader. "That's the plan, then?" Tubba asked for confirmation. Blizzerd and Gonzales both nodded. "It's up to you to execute it now, Tubba," Gonzales answered, pushing himself back onto the bed. "Good luck." Giving his friends a curt nod, Tubba turned around and headed for the door. Whenever he needed advice or help, these two had always been there for him. He could only hope he could count on the the other battlers as much.